Symptom:C-shell fails to execute commands with arguments using wildcard characters.

eg.,

% \rm -rf *Arguments too long

% ls -l | wc 8462 76151 550202

The reason for this failure is that the wildcard has exceeded C-shell limitation(s). The command in this example is evaluating to a very long string. It overwhelmed the csh limit of 1706, for the maximum number of arguments to a command for which filename expansion applies.

xargs reads a group of arguments from its standard input, then runs a UNIX command with that group of arguments. It keeps reading arguments and running the command until it runs out of arguments.

The shell's backquotes do the same kind of thing, but they give all the arguments to the command at once. That's the main reason for the Arguments too long error, when the shell reaches its limitations